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Introduction

This chapter provides an introduction to viewing and analyzing images of the Earth from space. These images are especially powerful tools to help your students become familiar with other parts of the world, learn about some of the basic processes of geological change on both local and planetary scales, and recognize the human presence and impact on Earth.

However, you'll find that students (and adults!) are not familiar with the distance scale, the colors, or the unusual perspective of the images, and therefore have a difficult time deciphering them.  To incorporate these images in your curriculum, you and your students will need a new set of skills.

In this chapter we provide some guidance on how to approach the images - how to find images that are especially interesting, how to get oriented to their scale and location, and how to pursue investigations stimulated by the images.

Before the shuttle flight, it is important only to have a general feeling for the scale of the photographs: what you can hope to capture in a photograph (i.e. don't expect to get a photo showing all of Africa; or one showing the logo on the roof of your school). But before you begin to analyze images from space (either before the flight or after the flight), you should read this chapter carefully. There is a lot of information in each image, but it take practice and guidance to be able to extract it.

Essentials:
• Image scale! Photos from the KidSat camera can capture lakes, river deltas, cities deforestation....but not continents or whole states, and not individual houses or city blocks.

We emphasize investigations and inquiry-based learning because students often learn best when they are personally engaged -- when they  have questions they are pursuing and a genuine interest in the images.  Each image has a story to tell (or several inter-woven stories), and these stories unfold through the investigations. This also mirrors how scientists typically explore and make use of images in their own research.

Note: A set of lithographs, for the images referred to in this chapter, will be sent separately.

Teachers' Guide  Page 9.3